Blog of the EMPA Conference

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I recently had the fabulous opportunity to be part of a group of 14 Victorian public service staff from across government deployed for two weeks to work with the Queensland Department of Communities on cyclone recovery.

Working as part of Department of Communities’ Needs Assessment Teams, we were based in Cairns and travelled each day to the cyclone-affected areas of Mission Beach, El Arish, Tully and Cardwell along the Cassowary Coast in far north Queensland. The main relief centre was located at Tully, and from there we would divide into teams of two, and together with a representative from Life Line or Red Cross and with (literally) a cut lunch, map, four-wheel drive and a cheque book, we would set out to call on all the properties in the area assigned to us each day.

Whilst the humidity, torrential rain and flash flooding, concerns about Dengue fever and crocodiles, and five hours each day on the bus where a challenge, this was one of the most amazing and humbling experiences I have had. The Needs Assessment Team members, both Victorian and Queensland, proved to be an intrepid, experienced group who showed amazing versatility and commitment, no matter what the task. Navigating unfamiliar roads (where many of the road signs had blown away), arranging emergency accommodation, tracking down material aid, assessing grants, even rescuing three chickens and an injured rooster – it seemed no job was beyond us and there were lively stories each afternoon on the bus.

It was such a privilege to meet so many local people and to be shown, first hand, the affect TC Yasi on their homes, farms and livelihoods. Anna Bligh was right when she said they breed them tough in Queensland; we found such courage and stoicism in the midst of the most terrible damage to properties and communities. In one small town the impact of the cyclone had been so severe that the actual coastline had been re-shaped to the extent that one person’s block of land no longer existed.

I found a great many similarities between cyclone recovery and bushfire recovery – the need for water, fuel, generators, clothing, temporary shelter, grants, insurance claims, the sense of disrupted lives, the guilt of those whose homes were intact, the need for social support and to be able to tell your story.

I am so grateful to have had this experience and hope to use it to further illustrate the value of building community resilience as a strategy for disaster preparedness and recovery.

As a broadcaster and broadcast trainer, who has been drawn into the sphere of emergency media only recently, I know there are many more people who know much more than me about it. Kristin’s blog puts her in a very special position to comment from the viewpoint of a practitioner and also a recent victim of disaster. I agree totally with her points about local information in the recovery stage, which is much less of a priority for many media than covering the disaster itself. There has been a lot of talk about the recovery aspect from the Australian community radio sector, who are the closest to the community and well placed to help in recovery. The most recent example is UGFM after the Victorian bushfires. I look forward to hearing more of Kristin’s story at the conference.

My own viewpoint comes from the background of a former broadcast manager and now an international trainer, and I hope I can make a contribution in helping media understand emergency services and vice versa.

I have found that understanding the pressures on both sides helps media and emergency services staff work better together. Finding common ground and realising that both media and emergency services both aim to help people and save lives, is a good starting point. Honestly understanding the pressures faced by media – such as deadlines and highly competitive editors, and by emergency services – such as the constraints of law and agency protocols, is another good place to start in achieving better cooperation through finding common ground.

In a project initiated by the Attorney General’s Department, I developed a training program where these things are discussed, with the aim of creating a better working relationship between media and emergency services. I have now delivered the program in a few different places and so far so good in achieving better understandings on both sides. The project is just one small part in the many steps being taken by everyone to make sure the media and emergency services work well together for the public good in times of emergency.

I am writing this blog from Afghanistan. Here is an example of extreme conditions where some of the principles we will talk about at the upcoming conference are desperately needed to help rebuild the country. I will tell you more about it at the conference.

Steve Ahern is an international broadcast training consultant, broadcaster, author and media commentator, and will deliver a paper at the EMPA conference on collaboration between emergency services and the media.

From the Queensland floods to the Christchurch earthquake and the tsunami in Japan, the major disasters which we’ve already experienced during these first few months of 2011 have already demonstrated that social media has now found a place in emergency management. Social media is not replacing existing media, of course, but providing an important additional channel both for sharing information about the crisis itself, as well as for gathering first-hand information from those directly affected by the it. Managed appropriately, social media can become an important tool for emergency authorities and local residents alike.

In the Mapping Online Publics research project at Queensland University of Technology, we’re interested in the use of social media (including blogs, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr) by Australians in general, and during acute events in particular. Based in Brisbane, we’ve experienced first-hand the role of Twitter and Facebook during the recent floods in Queensland, and the excellent use made of those tools by the Queensland Police Service in particular, and we’ve continued to track the role of Twitter in Christchurch and Japan as well as in other emergency situations.

To do so, we’ve also developed a range of innovative new research methods for tracking, capturing, and analysing social media activities around specific events and issues, and we’re working with a number of national and international partners to further develop and apply these methodologies. Already, we’re able to track the evolution of crisis events on Twitter on an almost real-time basis, and we’re looking to apply those insights in working with emergency authorities to further enhance their strategies for using social media platforms as part of their overall emergency media responses.

I’m looking forward to finding out more from the EMPA community about how they’re currently approaching social media, and how we might collaborate on further approaches. In the meantime, please feel free to visit our project website for a snapshot of our research activities.

The world has changed post floods and cyclones. The devastation was tragic and widespread throughout Queensland, with many communities still trying to recover.

The impact for the Queensland Police Service (QPS) Media and Public Affairs Branch has also been significant. Our use of social media during these crises has been well documented, but what happens next?

We established Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts last year to ensure we had an online community of followers before a disaster occurred. Little were we to know natural disasters of such magnitude were just around the corner, or that so many people would turn to our social media accounts for information in a crisis.

At the EMPA conference, I’ll give some brief insights into the incredibly rapid growth of our social media accounts during the crises, how we managed them and how we were able to improve our service to the media and community through the use of social media. I will also touch on where we go from here as the QPS looks to the future of managing large communities of online followers.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it – check us out on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, @QPSmedia.

-Simon Kelly

Simon is the Acting Deputy Director, Queensland Police Service Media and Public Affairs Branch and will deliver a paper at the EMPA conference on Queensland Police Service’s use of social media during the recent Queensland floods.

Hi all, Susan here, on a grey, cool day in Canberra, very autumnal. I’m looking forward to the conference, meeting everyone and listening to what I know will be a stimulating and rewarding set of papers.

My paper is about resilience, and arises out of my connection with an organisation called Australia21 and my research interest in community recovery after disaster.

Resilience is intimately associated with good communication. Without resilience, communities are not likely to recover after disaster. In this context, governments are rightly concerned with the maintenance of a robust and fully functioning society that is able to withstand the shock of disaster, whether caused by nature or human intervention.

However, the problem for government agencies is how to communicate with people at risk (which, given recent extreme weather and geological events, is virtually the entire population) initially to encourage preparation and mitigation activities, and later to assist with recovery following disaster.

Communication strategies for both of these stages are difficult to implement well and can be politically risky. My contention in this paper is that communication intended to foster resilience means more than simply delivering information. This is true of all stages of the emergency process – prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.

My paper examines the components of resilience in the context of disaster, the role communication can play in promoting resilience, and proposes some pointers toward the use of communication to assist in building and maintaining resilient, adaptable communities.

See you at the conference!

– Dr Susan Nicholls

Dr Susan Nicholls is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Australian Institute for Sustainable Communities, University of Canberra.

It’s been a bumpy few months in Christchurch. I never would have thought six months ago that my summer would be dominated by three earthquake responses. But it has.

Working with a variety of government entities I’ve been in the fortunate position of being able to see first hand how communications has, and sometimes, hasn’t worked. As well as being involved in the response effort regarding building assessment, and then the review of other facets of response (education and infrastructure), I’ve been one of those on the receiving end of public information too.

Only this weekend I became very excited (as did some of my friends) when a chemical toilet arrived at my front door. And the highlight of last week was being able to turn the lights on throughout my house. I can hardly wait until the day when I don’t have to boil water before drinking it or brushing my teeth. As for going back to the gym, or being able to bus to work, that remains a distant dream.

When I was first invited to speak at the EMPA conference I was going to talk about all the great lessons learned and applied in September, but five months and two more noteworthy shakes later, the personal experiences associated with living with earthquakes offers a more pertinent message for those tasked with providing relevant public information to an affected community.

It isn’t the dramatic building collapses that people want to know about, it’s how to get the kids to school safely, when their workplace will likely be able to be accessed, and what supermarkets are open. People living in an affected area aren’t concerned with the statistics regarding how much of the city is damaged, they want to know when their neighbourhood is likely to be restored and whether they should leave town or tough it out for a few more days.

Overall Christchurch’s earthquake responses have been handled very well, with the media being an active partner in spreading information. Even so, there are still opportunities to build a greater and more needs-driven role for the media following emergencies – truly making the media a partner in community recovery, and not just an observer.